Migrant domestic worker beaten by employer and agency owner

Human Rights Watch collected a number of accounts from workers who alleged abuse by their recruitment agencies. A 23-year-old Filipina arrived in Lebanon on April 1, 2009. After two months, her first employer sent her back to the agency because she said she no longer wished to work. “The work was too hard. The house very big,” the worker said. According to her, the owner of the agency “slapped me and pulled my hair into the wall.” He then allegedly kept her at his house for three weeks. “They would give me only bread to eat,” she said. After things did not work out with another employer, the owner of the agency again took her back and beat her, she said.